Hello. I installed the Android 7.0 Nougat update on my phone a few weeks ago and ever since that time I have had persistent issues with my WiFi where it will either not stay connected while in use or go through normal connection speeds (40+ Mbps download) to crawling (0.34 Mbps download) when testing using the SpeedTest application. I can get these results within minutes of each other and without moving my phone from the place of testing. I never get results in the middle, it's either really fast or abominably slow. The first few days after the update, I killed my data plan because the WiFi was so awful. Since then I've had no choice but to use the throttled data speeds (which are often faster than my WiFi speeds now) or just deal with the WiFi connection being so bad. This has also been destroying the battery on my phone. I used to get an easy 16+ hour day out of my battery (off battery at 8am, no need to charge until midnight or later and that was usually still only around 20% remaining battery life). Since the update, my phone is below 50% battery by the mid-afternoon (during my work hours when I hardly touch my phone) and will be below 15% by 8pm, often completely draining and turning off by the time I normally go to bed. If it's the weekend and I'm not at work, I basically have to have my phone connected to a charger at all times. I've never had to plug in my phone to charge multiple times a day until this update.

As for my WiFi, it's not my router that's causing this issue. The problems I have been experiencing with my WiFi on my phone started the exact day of my update to Nougat. I have a multitude of devices connected through my router and none are experiencing any connectivity or speed issues. Only my Note5 is affected.

Also, most likely due to the connection being so bad with or without WiFi enabled, I am either unable to send a text message without rebooting my phone or I receive text messages hours later. The timestamp for the text on my phone will be for the time it was sent, but I don't get any notifications of a new message until several hours later. This also occurs with Facebook Messenger. Instagram has also been acting strangely since the update where it will either not give me any notifications whatsoever (and also refuse to refresh my feed or notification screens) or it will suddenly show me 15+ notification tiles on my lock screen from stuff that happened days ago. And if this happens, it will keep showing me the same old notifications over and over again (every hour or so) until I reboot my phone. I've had to reboot this phone more in the last few weeks than I have in the nearly 2 years that I've owned it.

I just remembered another one. My WiFi Calling is absolutely horrendous, and no wonder why if my connection speeds are so inconsistent. I've had to drop calls numerous times, disable my WiFi, and call back because I couldn't hear anything on the other end outside garbled noise. When I call back using my cellular connection, the person on the other side will usually tell me they couldn't hear me at all or it sounded like I was speaking from the bottom of a well.

Is there any way to fix any of this? This update has caused my phone to go from "I'll be able to use this thing for years" to "I want to snap you in half." It has been so frustrating and I've been holding onto hope that maybe there will be a hotfix or something and my phone will start to work correctly again, but I've seen nothing regarding that so far. Please help.

All replies

Oh yah, one more that I just remembered. My phone NEVER tells me I have a new e-mail anymore through Gmail when it was always super fast about notifying me this before. A lot of the time now, I can open the Gmail app and force it to refresh and see a few junk e-mails, so I delete them and they appear gone. Well, if I log into Gmail on my computer not only are those e-mails still there, I have more that my phone didn't show me.

I got impatient and so I backed up my data on my phone and did a complete factory default restore. I did this after several days without a reply here and probably the day before someone responded.

I -think- it fixed it. I'm still trying to figure out if there are further issues, but it's a lot better. Gmail notifies me when I have an e-mail now, so that's nice. Text messages actually send and receive now, which is a huge improvement. WiFi speeds are far more consistent, I just did a test as I'm typing this and got 69.02 Mbps down and 6.08 Mbps up, and I haven't noticed any of the previous WiFi issues I reported. WiFi Calling is usable again, and I'm not getting any complaints from anyone that I call or calls me when I have it enabled now. Instagram still gives me notifications a bit oddly now, it still tells me I have updates when I don't and it can be the same update notification repeatedly, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was.

Battery life I'm still not sure on. I've had a few days off work due to the holiday and I've used my phone more frequently than normal for the week. I believe the battery life has improved but I'd need a few normal days of usage before I'm confident in providing a status there.

Sorry we didn't respond sooner, but I appreciate you coming back and giving us such a thorough update. Is Instagram the only app mentioning it needs to be updated? I'm just curious if that issue is app specific. I'd appreciate it if you let us know how well the battery life does. There's a way to look at which app (or apps) are draining the battery. Can you also let us know what your phone is showing you with your status update please?

Hey, gr5312! It's been a few days since we heard from you, but we just wanted to check in and see if you had any updates about the battery life on your phone after testing it with normal usage. How is everything going?

Sorry about the delay there, I haven't had a chance to check this in awhile.

I believe the battery issue is resolved. Normal use sees battery in 50-60+% by the evening during the week and down to the teens by the end of the night with heavier use on the weekend. This is similar enough to how my phone was responding pre-update.

Doing a fully factory reset on my phone appears to have resolved the issues I reported after the update to Android 7.0 (Nougat).

Thanks for coming back to let us know! A reset isn't the most enjoyable device maintenance, but I'm definitely glad it solved the problems here. This will be helpful for any other users who come hunting for answers on the forum with the same issue! We appreciate your time, thanks again.

Oh man gr5312 I sure hope you haven't decided to snap the phone in half by now. I do have a suggestion. Can you try using the phone in Safe mode for a little while to see if the same issues pop up? Putting the phone on in safe mode will temporarily disable downloaded apps and allow the phone to work with just the preinstalled applications. Sometimes software upgrades have trouble "playing" nicely with downloaded apps and this test will help us find that out. Please let us know the results so we can get an idea of how to help troubleshoot this further. Thanks!